CARROLLTON - Although the Carrollton Hawks baseball squad was eliminated by Father McGivney Catholic on Saturday, May 24, 2025, the team still played as hard as they could, but came up short on the day.
"Well, you never want to end," said Carrollton head coach Ryan Howard. "So, my boys played hard, we wanted to get to a regional championship. We succeeded there, but all in all, my boys came out the day before yesterday, played their butts off against Metro-East Lutheran, which is a good ball club, and showed what they could do.
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"I'm extremely proud of them, but when you're looking down the barrel of a Father McGivney, like we did in football against Belleville Althoff, at the end of the day, we probably played the state champs. So, all I can do is have my boys hold their heads high, and know we played good (Class) 1A baseball, and I'm proud of them."
Coach Howard will be taking away very positive memories of Carrollton's body of work this season.
"We had some injuries," Howard said. "Our top pitcher, top hitter went down about 12 games ago, and that affected a little bit of the morale. So, we slumped a little bit. We played very well; we've got some young pitching, our two aces are juniors. So, they're going to be back next year.
"Our outfield, I feel, was one of the top outfields in 1A, we played lockdown outfield, made some good catches today, to keep us in those first couple of innings. So, obviously, our boys came out, they've done what I've asked them to do. We should have put a few more wins on the board this year, but like I said, we had a lot of injuries, and a couple of other things that just didn't go our way. But overall, I'm very proud of my boys, they always showed up."
And of course, that's all Howard could have asked for. The Hawks showed up for each game, and played hard.
"The past five years, when it comes down to crunch time," Howard said, "we've done very well getting into the regionals, trying to get to the championship, and making something happen, when the odds were against us, and they've always done it. So, we're proud of being able to get to the championship. Then, we've got to let the cards lie where they go."
